“For the swarm!” Inside the world of professional StarCraft players

First in Korea and now in the US, StarCraft players have gone pro. Ars attends …

The games begin

MLG events run over three days and employ a complicated matchmaking system. There is "Pool Play" where the top sixteen seeded players are assigned to four groups and compete in round-robin fashion, and then there is the "Open Bracket" where hundreds of lesser-known competitors and non-seeded players battle to gain one of four extra spots in Pool Play. The top two players in each pool go to the quarterfinal matches, then the winners advance to the semis and the final.

The tournament is "double-elimination," meaning that if you lose one best-of-three match at any point in the Open Bracket or the quarters or semis, you are not yet out of the competition. Instead you drop to the unfortunately-named "Loser's Bracket" where you can battle all the way back to the finals again, although losing in this bracket means elimination from the tournament. Since every competitor is allowed to lose one match, the undefeated player from Pool Play who makes it to the finals against the winner of the Loser's bracket is allowed to lose the first best-of-three match and still have another chance to win the tournament. Finally, there is an "Extended series rule" where if two players have met before and meet again at any point in the tournament, their initial best-of-three score is kept on the table and the series becomes a best-of-seven.

It's not complicated at all!

Confused yet? MLG offers a helpful video in the style of 1950's educational films before the tournament begins, and defends its tournament choices by pointing out that the setup gives the fans more chances to see their favorite players without having one unlucky series knock out a favorite early on. Most of the matches from Pool Play are featured on the main stage with running commentary, while the Open Bracket is played primarily in a large, LAN-style area.

Sometimes this means that exciting stories happen offstage and the majority of spectators miss the action. An unseeded fan favorite, the Ukrainian Aleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk, was late getting to the event from the airport and forfeited his first match in the Open Bracket, dropping to the Loser's Bracket. He battled his way through and eventually ran into the same player (Gimix) again. The Extended Series rule was in effect, so it was a best-of-seven match with White-Ra down 0-2. Gimix, however, believed that such an advantage was "not honorable," so in the first two games he rushed all his workers into White-Ra's base to die so that they could start the series "fairly" at 2-2. White-Ra thanked his competitor and proceeded to demolish him to win the series 4-2. He would almost make it to the finals and even appear once on the Main Stage, cheered on with thundering applause.

Competitors playing in the Open Bracket

Back in Pool Play, the Korean players sailed through their opponents. Boxer and MMA ended up undefeated in their groups at 5-0. In the Winner's group semifinals, Boxer had an incredible series of matches against Park "Rain" Seo Yong, another Korean player and former GSL runner-up who had recently moved to North America. In the first game of the best-of-three, both Rain and Boxer were cautious to the point of absurdity. In StarCraft, Terran is a race that naturally lends itself to "turtling", and when two Terrans set up lines of siege tanks ready to pound any advancing armies straight into the ground, the game can reach a kind of stalemate.

In this game, however, stalemate was taken to a whole new level. Neither player wanted to risk losing by engaging the opposing army first, so each sat back and built up to the maximum supply count of 200. Then each built bases until they had evenly split the entirety of the huge map. Then they started researching all the upgrades for their units. They got all the obvious ones, like +3 upgrades for armor and weapons on their infantry, vehicles, and air units, then they got all the non-obvious ones, like the slow but deadly Hunter-Seeker missile for their Ravens. Some missiles were launched, but the gigantic air fleets (covering the entire screen) simply ran away and waited for the missiles to run out of fuel and fall harmlessly to the ground. Finally, the two players got all the silly upgrades, like extra armor for buildings. Then they threw workers into the maw of enemy fire so they could make more units. Then they sacrificed weaker units so they could make stronger units. Then... they stared at each other.

"T_T," wrote Boxer in the chat window, mimicking crying.

Finally, after almost an hour and a half, Boxer ran his army into Rain's army. Rain had more Thors, and their anti-air missiles did terrible damage to Boxer's Viking fleet. Boxer hung on until the very end, however, trading army for army, and even lifted off with his buildings to very nearly force a draw.

A fan can't believe what he is seeing

And that was just game one.

Boxer lost, but the exhaustingly long game and crushing defeat seemed, incredibly, to invigorate him. In the second game, he came from behind and achieved air superiority, then attacked suddenly with Ravens, placing down auto-turrets and fast-moving Hellions and tanks, to tie the series. In game three he executed a clever strategy where he pushed around some rocks on the map to outflank Rain's army.

After the victory, Boxer came rushing out on stage, pumping his fists and basking in the deafening cheers from the crowd for just a moment before going into the other booth to shake hands with his opponent.

Boxer's interview following his epic series with Rain

Boxer moved on to the semifinals but lost to Jeong "MVP" Jong Hyeon, a powerful Terran and two-time GSL champion. Boxer then dropped to the Loser's Bracket, where he met up with his protege MMA, who had fallen down earlier in the tournament. This was the Loser's Bracket final, and the winner would go on to face MVP again for the championship.

The series was epic. There was no turtling like the first game between Boxer and Rain, as both players gave their all. MMA won the first game, but Boxer rallied to tie the series at 1-1. The third game featured non-stop aggression and an ever-shifting balance of power. Boxer seemed on the verge of defeat, but he rallied his tank lines into a huge push and, like a futuristic Rommel, turned a disadvantage into an advantage by flanking his opponent from both sides. But Boxer could not withstand the unrelenting assault from MMA and finally tapped out. MMA, like iloveoov so many years ago, was shaken with emotion from his victory. Boxer, however, was practical-minded; he went to MMA's booth and immediately helped him plan how he could defeat MVP in the final.

One of the drawbacks of a double-elimination format is that the Grand Finale is somewhat anti-climactic. MMA knew he would have to win two best-of-three series in order to take the title, and it seemed like that extra mental pressure made it just that much harder for him to win. MVP played well, expertly controlling his Banshees and raining down death from above while his Hellions attacked MMA's worker line. In the second game, MMA scraped and crawled his way to a victory with only thirteen workers left, an unthinkably low number for late in the game. In the third game, MMA sent his own Banshees in to do damage, but MVP had Vikings ready to shoot them out of the sky. He tried to come back with a late push with marines and tanks, but to no avail. MVP won the championship, and the crowd started to chant his name.

A panorama shot of the MLG crowd for the final games

Boxer finished MLG in third place, his best result in a major StarCraft tournament since 2005. In an interview with MLG after the event, he was asked how he felt.

MLG: You were by far the crowd favorite in Anaheim, BoxeR. Were you aware of the size of your American fanbase? Can we expect to see you return for another MLG?

Boxer: I was once again moved by the American fans through this MLG. Because of that I felt happiness, and I approached the event thinking, "Was it really this possible to enjoy a tournament this much?" Call me any time. If it's a place with fans like these, then I will always go.